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911 Call Tracking Site Stirs Concern
Frosty Piss writes, "This story comes from the Seattle Post-Intellegencer. For the past year, John Eberly has operated Seattle911.com, a site that until this week took real-time feeds of 911 calls from the Seattle Fire Department and plotted them on Google Maps. But on learning of Eberly's site, officials cited 'security concerns' and altered the way they display 911 calls on their Web site, changing the format from text to graphical, preventing Eberly from acquiring the raw data. (Several programmers are quoted musing how trivial it would be to work around this evasion.) Fire officials worry that allowing others to display where fire crews are on an Internet map could make things easier if terrorists were planning an attack. That logic left Eberly and others scratching their heads, as the information continues to be publicly available on the Fire Department's site. 'We're not obligated to provide this information. It's something that we did for customer service in the first place,' a Fire Department spokesperson said. So is this public information? Should the data be available to the public in real time?" The Seattle P-I story ends with a quote from Bruce Schneier: "The government is not saying, 'Hey, this data needs to be secret,' they are saying, 'This data needs to be inconvenient to get to.'"
"But the plans were on display ..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."
liqbase
They're afraid of terrorists attacking a fire?
Learn to know, the dark side of the force, and you will achieve a power greater than any Jedi...the power to save your w
Come on, does anyone really think that making the information a tiny bit harder to get is going to discourage real terrorists? Why do so many people persist in the idea that if we make the world hard to use that bad people won't be able to use it, bad people are the ones who will invest the time to learn how to work the system. A change like this does one thing, inconvieniences those people who may have found some use for this program. It doesn't stop terrorist, it doesn't help the public, it doesn't even make a good public relations story. How long before someone rebuilds the site to grab the graphics and translate them do you think? And how long after that before the govenment makes the data in those funny letters on forums at which point they may as well not even publish it. Every time I think I've grasped the limit of stupidity it moves further and further away...
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Is it important to know, in real-time, where emergency crews are? Why? So you can chase the ambulance that much easier? To gawk as crews try to rescue people, and possibly get in the way?
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
If this was just for fires, I don't think it is incredibly bad, but my first thought on seeing the headline was, "why are they releasing 911 data in the first place?" I mean, were they posting medical emergencies, too? That is kind of creepy.
But on the other hand, if they were releasing the information, I don't see anything wrong with someone actually using the data. The shock to me is that they were releasing it publicly...in real time to begin with.
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
I don't quite get it. I can't read the article as the link ends up at a non-existant blog post.
I'll have to start out by saying I'm amazed such information was ever available. I'm just surprised anyone would think to post that for people.
I have to say I'm with the government on this one. Why does anyone need to know exactly where all the 911 calls are coming from in real time? I can understand why such data should be available, but why not give it a 24 hour delay? There are just SO many uses for this data for evil (where you can torch a house, when you can steal something with few cops nearby, where you can go to ambulance chase the most successfully, etc.).
If you have a good reason for needing the data in real time, I see no problem with using a simple free registration to get to it.
I just don't see why this needs to be available to the public in real time.
Frankly, I'd be more worried about other people having it. Not just for the stuff listed above, but for neighbors watching to see if I were to call and other uses like that which I wouldn't be big on. A particularly savvy criminal (or group) could rob houses and track local 911 calls to see when the cops have been tipped off about them so they know when to split.
Or, if you have a restraining order against you, you could watch when the police get called to the house then go in after they leave.
I can't think of any good reason why most people need this live. I can't think of a single one. Businesses, I can think of a few, but private citizens?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
While I think this specific case is somewhat asinine, the general rational has always been that enough public information, when compiled, can be considered "sensitive" or "classified".
Like that one kid's thesis detailing the layout of internet backbone cables, or back in the day when basic nuclear theory was available in public texts, but was still considered a gov't secret.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I was in a metro bus and wanted to take a picture of some trees outside. The bus driver told me, "Hey, you can't take pictures in here."
I asked, "Why not?!"
He said, "I'm actually supposed to report you to the police, if you do. Terrorism."
"What are they going to do, reverse engineer the bus timetables from photographic evidence? This can't possibly make us any safer."
He replied, "Well, who's to say."
Who's to say indeed.
Absolutely absurd.
Note that busview will give you the location of all Metro busses in real time.
"The government is not saying, 'Hey, this data needs to be secret,' they are saying, 'This data needs to be inconvenient to get to.'"
Now they just need to apply the same logic to their lists of gun owners.
I don't know seattle911.com, so I don't know if it's absolutely critical to have the data in real-time. But if not, just make the data available in the convenient format, but an hour or so later. As far-fetched as the terrorist scenario may sound, with this solution everybody could be happy, no? Or is this just another subtle reminder of the never-ending War on Terrer?
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
So the educated Pyro can wait until everyone is else where, hop on the motorbike, and start five, ten fires and really tie up the fire department. Great.
You could do that to begin with, but now you can plot your course to string everyone out better and more efficently.
Need an ISP in South Africa?
In many places 911 calls are public record. Also, when the police are called (even if it's not 911), those reports are often public record.
I'm not sure if it applies to this Seattle or not, but it should be easy enough to find out. Here there are several public web sites where you can look at current fire/ems/traffic activity or city police incident reports. Both sites contain information available to the public by other means, and providing it on a web site helps to cut down on paper information requests.
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
There is no way that 911 call information should be available at anything approaching real-time data.
They want to make the information available for customer service purposes then good, put it on a 24hr delay.
I think that Schnieder must have been mis-quoted there, as data that has been purposefully made inconvenient to get to is, by it's nature, secret. Data that has been simply obfuscated and published is not secret or has been dealt with incorrectly.
If this data can cause national (or even local) security issue, then it should be classified and secret whilst that info is useful (i.e. publish it immediately when the crews get back to their base from the call).
The standard big bad wolf that was used anytime someome wanted to stop you from doing something completely reasonable in the US used to be "Sorry, but due to liability, you cant...".
That implied some kind of financial damage if you did not listen.
Now the standard has changed to "terrorist threat". Imagine being sent to GitBay, shipped to Syria and tortured, and imprisoned forever. That is a hell of a lot more efficient.
I have noticed that in the US nobody dear to
1. Cross the line into the garage to look at the guys changing tires on their car anymore.
2. Allow thir children to ride in the shopping carts
3. Use opposite sex bathrooms
4. Engage in significan physical activity
5. Any other activity that looks like terrorist planning or execution.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
There are these things called scanners....you can hear the cops in real-time
It's a tool that terrorists can use to coordinate an attack.
Czech language for absolute beginners
Why shouldn't the public know what's going on in their city or locale?
If a fire broke out at my apartment complex, I don't want to know five minutes from now, I want to know right fucking now. If there's been a shooting at my (hypothetical) kid's school, I don't want to know five minutes from now, I want to know NOW. What makes "public city officials" more special than the rest of us when it comes to information that could be used to adequately protect our families and friends better than the spread-thin public servants could?
If we have access to information in realtime and there's a number of simultaneous robberies or other police emergencies and the police are all out doing their policey thing and then a riot breaks out on 5th Avenue, don't you want to be able to call your family that lives on 8th Avenue before the rioters get there, to tell them to stay away from the windows and lock the doors? Keeping this information from the public is completely stupid, it's just one more opportunity to mention the wonderful war on terror, something which itself has a more frightening affect on the public than any terrorist act they've ever witnessed or been close to.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
The fire crews are probably stationed in the various fire companies! And the ambulances are probably in the garage somewhere!
Maybe we should force our emergency personnel to live underground, popping up out of random holes and disappearing back down as quickly as possible. If we don't do something quick, then the terrorists will have won.
Or is it just that it's no ones business who was in an accident other than the parties envolved? If I wrecked on I-81 (that's the closest highway in PA for me) who needs to know that? And don't say it's for traffic either, most radio stations do traffic on the hour.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Is your right to know that your porn collection is going up in flames "right now" more important than giving away "potentially" useful information of where first-repsonders are, "right now"?
Of course, if I were a terrorist, I would have no problem setting any number of nuisance fires, if needed.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
It either needs to be secret & kept secret or available. On the internet, once something's known, it's not hard to get at, at all. What are you going to do? Have it so people have to click through 20 different links before they get to a randomly changing URL of where the data is at? Shit.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
If you look at their current webpage it shows the dispatch list in jpg format.
1. use ocr software to convert to text
2. parse text
3. fuck them
4. pay your taxes for those ignorant bastards
I was just at Heathrow over the weekend- waiting for my wife to get back from the duty free in Terminal 3. It's one of the world's crappiest terminals- not even chairs at the gate. SO there I am waiting, sitting on the only space available, the floor. Here comes some guard saying I can't sit there- "security reasons". So WTF am I supposed to do, call to my genie wife to bring me back into her bottle with her? "Security Reasons" is the catch phrase of power-hungry bureaucrats everywhere, it means, "I'd like to push you around and you'd don't dare even question me when I give you even an unreasonable command on a whim". I got a headache when I read about the RFID tags at the Hungarian airport. Security is used by all the worlds' despots as the rationale for their staying in power. No kidding Capt Obvious you say? Well, what's the best way to push aside this reason without being labeled treasonous?
Guess no one at the Seattle Police department has ever heard of OCR software. Here's a sample from their oh so secure system. Took me perhaps 5 minutes to write a Perl script to do this:
10/14/2006 19:03 F0601013631 E2 400PineSt Aid Response
10/14/2006 19:01 F0601013611 E40 2006 Ne North9ate Way Aid Response
10/14/2006 19:01 F0601013601 A2E2 1stAvN/RepublicanSt Aid Response
10/14/2006 18:59 F0601013591 A5 M10 1561 Alaskan Way S Medic Response
10/14/2006 18:57 F0601013561 M31 820 Nw 95th St Medic Response
10/14/2006 18:54 F0601013571 E25 1511 E Mercer St Alarm Bell
10/14/2006 18:51 F0601013561 E35 820 Nw 95th St Medic Response
10/14/2006 18:50 F0601013541 L4 2nd Av / Broad St Motor Vehicle Accident
The real file is longer I just took the current events.
1) Why would I? I've never met my neighbors, and I don't really care what they do on their property. That's a problem of loss of community and has nothing to do with liability or terrorism.
2) Most shopping carts have a place to put your child, speaking as a former retail employee I suggest you use it. Most people who let their kids ride in the basket of the cart seem to forget what happens when they take their eyes of of it and the child stands up and moves, shifting the weight of the cart that only had three items in it to begin with, causeing the child to fall out. I've seen dented skulls, liability is the last thing a good parent would worry about.
3) That's not a liability issue, that's a politeness issue. There is rarely a reason to need to use the opposite sex bathroom and if you really, really, really, have to go that bad I'm sure someone will understand.
4) Depends where you go, still nothing to do with liability.
5) Is there something wrong with not looking like terrorists? I know I try to avoid visits from the ATF and FBI, I always thought that was a good thing.
Maybe I just missed the point of your post?
This has nothing to do with terrorism and just a small bit with security. I'm a Firefighter/Paramedic in Northern Florida. Most large incidents are picked up by local news agencies within hours and the information widely broadcast.
Publically disseminating private emergency call information in realtime can compromise a fire scene investigation and open medical responders up to HIPAA http://http//www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/ violation lawsuits. A patient's PHI (Personal/Private Health Information) includes anything that connects their name/address/whatever to their medical condition. This is also the reason EMTs and Paramedics in our EMS company are not allowed to take photos of motor vehicle crashes because that photo then becomes part of the patients medical record and must be protected under HIPAA regulation. We know that anyone with a radio scanner can listen to live dispatches and that's why we never give names over the radio. Briefly looking at Seattles dispatch page I don't see any PHI.
My opinion is that Seattle is overreacting a bit.
Florida Highway Patrol put incidents up on their website with a delay...http://www.1stresponder.com/First Responder News delays their "live" dispatch stories about 30 minutes. As long as no personal information is given the public has a right to know what emergencies are going on in their neighborhood. Many fire departments and EMS services are struggling to keep up with these information issues but it ultimately comes down to patient privacy. Would you want the world to know that you called an ambulance because you tripped over a garden hose and did a face-plant on your patio?
By the same logic, websites that show traffic conditions should be shut down too. Well, ya, terrorists can make sure they don't get stuck in parking lot on the I-5.
Oz
He's talking about a service station. "Garage" is British for service station. When you're getting work done on your car, most service stations have a sign that says something like, "Due to insurance regulations, customers are not allowed on the shop floor."
Just last week. Chemical explosion and nasty fire in north carolina.Not the first, not the last. I guess you could wait 24 hours to tell people about it, as the clouds of shit that could kill them drifted over them. How about brush fires, you ever been in one? I used to fight them as a volunteer, sometimes people have minutes to evac- minutes, tops-so they shouldn't have a way to find out until it's too late? How about armed standoffs or bad car crashes that block whole roads for hours? Would it be nice to know about them in a timely manner? How about if you are a newsie, nice to get to where the news is going down? I can think of a LOT of reasons why this restriction is misguided, lame, stupid and fairly unconstitutional once you get down to it.
Really, this is government public business, the public has every right in the world to be informed of it, absolutely no different from any joe citizen can go sit in on court to any case you want if there's room in the pews.. no different at all, really.
This is allegedly a government by and for the people, not by and for the 1% connected elite and their hired on order taking and following drones. We had a revolution over that bit, remember?
Government is supposed to hold only a few cards with our express permission, everything else IS our business and THEY work at our suffrance, as our employees. I, for one, am SICK AND TIRED of government-as-masters and overlords who assume everything is theirs by default and you must grovel before them. As the expression goes, F dat shyte! They have just usurped all the powers and now make you beg for it, and whenever they find out you are using your born with rights they get all bent out of shape and want to take it away or sell you "permission" or something. Screw that! We tell them what to do, not the other way around! This ain't a massah/slave deal, none of that plantation action, no thanks!
Giving into this "everything revolves around terrorism" stuff is pure grade-A brainwashed crapola. You are a smart guy, you *really* don't believe all this hysteria crap they have whipped up to control the mouth breathers, do you? I understand the 'tards swallowing it because they think pro rasslin' is real, but not anyone normal who is reasonably intelligent. You can see through it for the extreme power grab and consolidation it really is? The Heglian Dialectic angle? Think about it, really think, imagine you are joe terrorist.. Anyone with a room temp IQ and above, with "tools" available at any qucikstore starting with a cig ligter, working completely alone, could go around the country and commit "acts of terrorism" on a daily schedule. And get away with it. Assymetrical warfare, pretty easy stuff really. So--where's the beef, where are all the attacks from the "OMG fundy islamofascist tarists sleeper cells all over gonna steal our freedom fries and rape the cattle!". Well??? Where are all the attacks?? There aren't any except for over were THEIR nations are being invaded, which is more or less understanable given the context of them..being invaded.
Maybe we have had one or two-maybe-I am still not convinced yet, to me it looks a lot more like a government reichstagg fire inside job.. the evidence we can see points way more to it being an inside job, using some stupid patsies at best.
Anyway, this "terrorism" jazz is primarily pushed for and by the coup plotters and those who profit from this coup takeover, and it really *is* a coup that has happened. They use "terrorist" as this generations buzzword to induce and perpetuate fear, uncertainty and doubt.
It's a scam, man, really, a freakin' scam...
How much "public" information should be easily accessible from any keyboard in the world? I find that it is hard to argue for privacy-laws that protect one's private information when we simultaneously demand that every piece of government data be available from any keyboard with internet access. The problem is not whether or not a "terrorist" is going to get ahold of this information, the problem is that maybe the person who's house is burning down feels like his misfortune is a personal, private, or community-affair rather than an international circus-show for the amusement of anyone who has a computer. Why is any of this "public" information on the internet to begin with is beyond me. Just because data is technically public, it does not mean the term "public" should be defined, via the internet, to extend to everyone outside the precinct, beyond the city-limits, over state lines, beyond the timezones, and to everyone in the world with a computer. In my state, I can type in a URL and within seconds pop-up the detailed divorce records, claims, counter-claims, child-custody fights, of anyone in my state. Although a couple is certainly aware that their situation is on some level "public", why does the state feel that public should involve the entire world with internet-access? What's wrong with making someone, who is really interested, walk down to the courthouse and ask for a copy of the documents? At the least, it is likely to ensure that people who are viewing the information come from the same community, at the most it prevents employers-creditors-coworkers-jealous schoolmates of their children-and anyone else in the world from leasurely sitting on their ass behind a keyboard and poking their nose around where it doesn't belong. What business is it of everyone in seattle to know who's house is burning down at any given time? If the goal is to measure the effectiveness of the fire-department, then that can be done without doing it in real-time. But, I fail to see how this information that often involves tradgedy for the people involved should be turned into google-meshup for anyone with internet access to gawk over. If someone has a legitimate or illigitmate interest in knowing who's house burned, they should at least be required to get off their ass and go ask for a copy of the report at the county-clerk's office. The same goes for those prying around in someone's divorce case, or curious to know how fast someone was going when they got their last speeding ticket. Public information doesn't mean the entire world qualifies as public, and public doesn't mean it has to be convenient.
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
I can see the obvious reasons for doing this, but why were they done? In my experience, things like this almost never happen in a vaccume. Politicians don't just wake up one day and think "OH MY JESUS CHRIST WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT 911 DATA".
I don't live anywhere near Seattle (about as far away as you can get, actually, in Central Florida), so I don't know what the political climate over there is. So maybe someone from there can enlighten me. Is this the work of some activist/watchdog group? Was there a recent issue over there that had to do with 911 records or this site? Is it some politician who was low in the polls and did this so they could play the "Look how awesome I am on National Security" card come election time? I really would like to know.
Would be really funny if they just put some code in to generate images from it like this (I've seen captcha's done like this): /gen_image.php?street=1_infinite_loop&zip=95014&ca ll=police
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
How do the radio and tv stations get their data to tell people? Really, how? Are they "secure government employees with the need-to-know"? Follow your reasoning and you would ban the press, except for the official state press, and put the "civilian" press on a 24 hour or never at all "delay". And why stop at 911, why not make it all government busness, I mean, if you aren't part of government, you don't need to know what's going on, nothing.
Can you see what's happening now better, extrapolate it a little?
Country Fire Authority and Department of Sustainability and Environment are two pages I have constantly open
Tell him, "Your paranoia is consistant with that of a meth addict. I'm going to report you for suspicion of being a drug user."
Does the Fire Department have Google Adsense?
Maybe they're sick of having this bot program relentlessly DOS them?
Perhaps this Website that uses this service should make some kind of compensation. The 911 dispatch is afterall creating the content. This issue is no different than Napster.
I'm telling you this AJAX stuff is no good. It's all these people grabbing data that ain't theirs.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Just for everyone information, my server was down earlier due to a rogue node on my VPS server (great timing by my host), not slashdotting. Here is my blog post on this issue that started some of this http://blog.eberly.org/2006/10/12/worlds-worst-use -of-a-jpeg
Here are the comments at Reddit.
http://reddit.com/info/lxbt/comments
Reddit sent over 30k hits in a short period to my server and it handled it fine, it just seems every Saturday somebody on my server gobbles up all the resources. I really will never recommend VPS from this host to anyone.
The medical emergency data... you could check for addresses of someone you're going to hire... see if they're likely to need 911 service at work, or if they have a famliy member likely to pull them from the office to go to the hospital
Oh come on, they're not going to send a 911 police reponse around to Apple just because of some stock irregularities.
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
[rant]
I suspect that I'm not the only one whose getting tired of hearing about taking this or taking that away because we're concerned about Terrorists. Terrorism is real, it sucks rocks, but we're living in those times where conventional wars apparently are a thing of the past. We have to get over it and get on with life.
How long are we going to let FUD hang over us and control us? If there's a non-terrorism reason, like you've got alot of people using the data to follow the emergency services and get in the way while gawking at what's going on, then yes, change the policy. Don't throw up a nebulous excuse that 'terrorists will use it!' Then we all go duck and cover and hope we don't get blown up.
Too many people have fought and died for our freedoms. Are we so frightened now, that those lives are meaningless, and we should give up our hard-won freedoms for the illusion of safety?
[/rant]
Sorry. I'm just getting tired of it.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
anyone else reminded of when facebook made the news feed, and everyone complained about their information being too accessible. Simple answer to both problems: If you don't want people to see it, you shouldn't put it on the internet.
One of the first lesson anyone planning "operations" learns is: leave nothing to chance. (chance has a way of sneaking up on you all on its own anyway) So if you were a terrorist planner... Would you just keep your team waiting around, waiting for someone to stumble across them, or put two and two together? Would you operate on someone elses timetable, or one left to chance? No, if you were planning something, you wouldn't wait until some conditions (eg. fire/emergency vehicles responding in some area you want/need) just happened to occur. No, you would plan and execute the necessary diversion. You wouldn't wait for some (possibly flakey) public website to confirm your action - you'd have your operatives in positive communications with you.
This smells like one of those "feel good" alleged security measures that in reality has zero net effect.
--- Just another Code-Monkey
What of use has come from that? Off hand I can only think of one thing. The media listen to scanners so they can get to the scene. If they are quick enough, they can take pictures, interview witnesses, etc. That by itself should be enough, but are there any other purposes?
You can't pop down the street to the cafe and surf the net to see how many hours it will be before the fire truck you paid for with your Seattle taxes actually shows up.
Especially if you're blind or vision-disabled, as graphics won't work properly with their new system.
So, if you're a blind Seattleite, it's NOT an "improvement".
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Well, I don't know...as we are aware that Seattle is such a hotbed of terrorist activity.
That's why we haven't got Bin L. yet in the mountains of over Middle East way- he's operating out of the Cascades!
OMG! I'm crawling into my shelter here in Oklahoma right now! *sarcasm off*
WTF? Terrorists responding to fires?- give 'em a hose and let them help fight the fires!
We know that they would not be smart enough to use a scanner, use their ears and follow the sirens, watch the frikken news- but heaven help us if they have access to Google Earth!
Damn, the insanity in this country is starting to drive me crazy.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I definitely don't see any good uses for the public in having this information real-time. Just because some people somewhere might have nothing better to do with their time than to see where in their city emergencies are happening doesn't outweigh the potential negative uses. Even for something like kidnapping - someone is kidnapped, locked into the basement of some house or whatever and left alone while his or her captors go upstairs. Somehow this person gets a hand free and is able to dial 911, but the savvy kidnappers have one of their dudes upstairs monitoring where 911 calls are coming from in real-time. They see a 911 call for their exact location, go downstairs and find their hostage has gotten a hand free. Grab him/her and split before the police can arrive. Or even if they don't have time to leave, they are well aware a SWAT team might be sneaking up on the house to try and break into the basement and free the 911-caller, thereby preventing any swift recovery of the hostage. Really, the same could be applied for any crime. Robbery - someone malicious finds out there's a family in a neighborhood thats gone away for the week so they break in. A neighbor who the robbers haven't seen in real life spots them and calls 911. Luckily for the robbers, one of their man is back in the getaway car monitoring 911 calls in real time, sees that a neighbor has called, calls his buddies and they leave long before the police can arrive. If someone could give a good, reasonable use for this information provided real-time to the general public, I'd be open to listening. But merely the fact that some number of people find it "interesting" doesn't mean it wouldn't be just as interesting being offset by 1 hour.
Actually, this is a reasonably sensible decision and it has nothing to do with terrorism (or rather, it might. "Fighting terrorism" gets people re-elected, so maybe that's what they're claiming, but there's a sane, realistic reason as well.) If you were, say, a professional burglar and you found out that an elderly woman in a rich part of town is being rushed to the hospital, wouldn't that be a wonderfully useful piece of information? Likely her husband (if she has one) will be at the hospital all day and likely well into the night, leaving the house completely unguarded. Hell, there's probably a decent chance that in the panic and confusion, the house was left unlocked.
This is a rather direct and extreme example, but there are others. Basically, they're just trying to discourage people exploiting the 911 system for personal gain/amusement, whether they're criminals or ambulance-chasing lawyers or bored teenagers. Whether the effort they've made is effective or worth the convenience tradeoff is another matter entirely, but I think the concern itself is genuine.
Changing the format that the information is displayed in seems like security through obscurity to me. I can understand that some people feel vunerable that this information is public, but it also allows the public to see how the emergency services respond i.e are there neibourhoods that the police take longer to get to?
ps I suck at spelling, even more so when I'm drunk
While state government websites are not required to conform to Section 508, Section 504 applies to all Federal grantees and contractors as well as to as the Federal government itself. If John Eberly wants, or any Seattle resident can file a complaint to the Seattle Office for Civil Rights.
ADA/City Service Complaint Section 504
The Office for Civil Rights works to ensure that members of the public who have disabilities can use City services and facilities. The Disability Compliance Specialist coordinates accessibility evaluation of City programs and services, offers training to City departments on disability awareness and compliance with laws, staffs the City's 504/ADA Advisory Committee (TBA) and handles 504/ADA grievances alleging discrimination in City programs and facilities.
http://www2.seattle.gov/fire/realtime911/showIncid ents.htm
Radio scanners have been available for years. You can listen to real time communications between fire departments, law enforcement, EMS, air traffic controllers, port authorities, public works, anyone that uses a two-way radio! There are magazines dedicated to those who listen to scanners. This has never been a problem for years. NEVER! NOW ITS A PROBLEM!?! WHY???
Yes, there are legitimate reasons for this data to be made public. One is oversight of the public safety system by those who pay for it, the tax payers. This information can be of use to you to know if something is going on in your neighborhood. Want to find out if there is a wreck on a road the radio traffic reports usually don't cover? This was a way to do it. Want to know if there was a robbery recently in the area. Now you know. Description of the suspect - yep can get that too. If you don't want to know, fine. Some folks do want to know. For some it is a hobby. Just look at the number of hits this guy was getting. Want to bet that not all of the hits were from the Seattle area?
We are seeing the very things that use to make life enjoyable in America taken away due to knee-jerk over-reactions. Anything we want to stop or hide we bring out the banner of terrorism. Sad. So Sad.
Maybe I have materials in my home that can complicate the firefighting process and I should be able to notify the fire department ASAP so they don't walk into an unknown situation. Maybe one of my neighbors has a key to my apartment and I would like them to go inside and grab my pet or wake my girlfriend/wife because the fire department hasn't shown up yet? Maybe I just want to get more details about what's going on to figure out what action I need to take? Maybe my kid's school hasn't yet let out, but I would like to notify the school not to send my child home because said home is on fire? This has nothing to do with porn collections, it has to do with human lives, psyches and damage control.
Also, there's a delay between when a 911 call is placed and the fire/police/whatever are dispatched and the time when they get there. A house in my parents' neighborhood nearly burned to the ground before the fire department showed up, 20 minutes after the call was placed. When time is of the essence, having the information ASAP is of significant importance.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
The kind of thinking on display here frightens the hell out of me.
"If we're not a first responder, why do we need the info in real time? "
"'ll have to start out by saying I'm amazed such information was ever available"
"Is it important to know, in real-time, where emergency crews are? "
"There is no way that 911 call information should be available at anything approaching real-time data"
This is completely ass-backwards.
There should be no need for me to prove that data, _any_ government data, should be available to me.
The government needs to prove there is a compelling reason for them not to make it available.
This sort of data serves some useful purposes and some not so useful purposes, in terms of tracking allocation of resources, seeing where hotspots are, knowing where that firetruck that just roared past you is going, and yes, pure entertainment.
The governments "counter-argument" consists of bogeymen in a closet.
The idea that anyone could come down on side of the government in this case is, to me, a sad commentary on the willingness of the populace to accept any old excuse that limits their access to the workings of their government.
-ajb
boo hoo...them terrorist are comming...boo hoo.
Used to live in Seattle. The fire dept. some years ago had nifty 4 Meg logs that not only showed fire calls but the exact adr and details if a car alarm went off. That'd make it pretty easy to know which cars to avoid if committing a crime. I pointed this out and was told that it was nothing to worry about, now they seem worried. They were idiots then and seem to have remained so.
Unless your grandmother has agreed otherwise, they *are* legally required to keep the nature of her medical emergency bottled up.
What the fuck...
It'd be cool to have the site email you to your phone if there's a call in one of your previously-listed addresses. So you know realtime wether [your house | your parents' house | your kid's school] is burning or not.
This is a step in the right direction. We can't let the enemy know where we're deploying our EMS teams. I don't know how we ever let this situation develop. It's almost like we *WANT* fire engines to be seen and heard, what with their bright red colors and loud sirens. What were we thinking?
The only way we can prevent terrorism is if we start to fund the development of stealth fire engines. Sure, they may cost $300 million each, but can you sleep at night knowing that Osama can track them this easily?
Don't even get me started on the availability of weather radar. Those damned terrorist-loving TV stations are keeping Al-Q constantly aware of approaching storm fronts. I don't want to give them any ideas, but it's pretty easy to see that all they have to do is wait for storm clouds to appear and then run around town stealing umbrellas from offices and restaurants and SCHOOLS! Think of the children, dammit!!11!One-hundred-eleven!!!!
Maybe a real-time feed from the 911 dept could have prevented this tragedy in the Seattle area:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8589349/
there wont be another terrorist attack. they've done their job, now they r sitting back in their loungerooms watching CNN pissing their pants laughing at the americans running around like little girls with wet panties lol. america looks like it will live in fear for the forseeable future, wait did i say fear? i meant "alert and jumpy" or whatever that stupid alias they have for fear there nowadays.
some dumbass jock crashes his plane into a building and every public offical in the country soils themselves and a few million gets spent putting warplanes in the air. bin laden soiled himself with mirth over that one haha. its like americans think its gaza or something lol. might be another attack in fifty years when they stop jumping every time someone cracks a fart hahahaha
Maybe I have materials in my home that can complicate the firefighting process and I should be able to notify the fire department ASAP so they don't walk into an unknown situation.
Yeah that's pretty likely. I'm surfing the internet and just happen to see that there's a fire in my house and I'm going to call the fire department before they get there to warn them about something.
If you're going to make up a situation at least make it plausable.
I live in Seattle. The 911 calls are not crime calls, they are ONLY fire and aid car calls, so your scenario simply does not work. Hmmm... I am a kidnap victim, fond a cell phone and I call 911 for a fire truck? NOT --The 911 calls are still not available to the public except by scanner. Check it our yourself: http://www2.seattle.gov/fire/realTime911/showIncid ents.htm
...doing a better or more timely job. You just found out, a lot of us have known about it for decades. Want another great example? Maybe you heard of this when it happened. Back during katrina, thousands of volunteers with boats convoyed down to NOLA to rescue people, because it was needed, and they had boats and wanted to help save folks. The pigs, and yes those badged mercenaries are mostly *pigs*, theyturned them back at gunpoint and threatened the volunteers with arrest and they let people die on purpose. And even though neither they nor the feds had any way to save those sorts of masses of people trapped in flooded areas, and even though they quite clearly knew people were drownding and trapped in houses with the waters rising, they still stopped the volunteers with boats. The civilians could have gotten out thousands, yet they were stopped. People died from those on purpose descisons, and no, government workers are just as much human as others, they are not "super human" and in an emergency such as that, just totally out of control and where time was of the ultimate essence (and got squandered by the government by decree), wouldn't YOU have taken a ride from some guy in his bass boat, or would you have said "no thanks, I'll wait for the official boat ride from the trained super-human government official workers in the official government boats with all the signed papers and authority."
See? It sounds ludicrous but it really happened. There are many, many more examples of this through our semi recent history, especially in the last 20 years since the stealth power grab coup has been ongoing.
They do this because they HAVE TO BE IN CONTROL. The people giving the orders now at all the top levels are megalomaniacs and fascists. They must have order-their orders- and you obey, and you never do anything that makes them look bad or makes it look like they aren't needed as much as they claim.
Governments' number one job, 100% of the time and above anything else is NOT to serve the people, contrary to some naieve rumors, it is to perpetuate and extend their power and rule over their serfs.
Are all people in government bad people? No. Absolutely not and I am not saying that. Their bosses are thoug, for the most part, once they have worked their way up in their careers, because by then ALL of them know about waste, fraud, corruption and illegalities, yet much less than 1% ever become whistleblowers, because they are chicken and don't want to blow their paychecks and pensions. They become complicit then, accessories after the fact.
Yes, this sucks bad but it is reality.
The bureaucracy is part of the system, the controllers couldn't control without the willing participation of their tame bureaucracy-and this is unfortunate, but true. Many are fine decent people at the lower levels-for instance like in this case the actual grunt firefighters mostly are- and work hard, but they take orders from the goons. That's reality. The corruption is at the top and midlevels mostly, exactly the same place where orders fall down from, so there ya go, and this is why there is so much trouble with governments all over once they become entrenched and corrupt, which the US is for most practical purposes now.
And it really is simple as that, and that is why they are screwing you over and the public over on this little useful thing you started and on so many others. They will actually go out of their way to make things worse if what is happening threatens their command and control power structure, which is why the lower level fire folks thought you had a good idea initially, because it obviously was, but why they got over ruled by their "superior beings" who give them orders which they must obey.
It happens all the time, and once you are aware of it you'll see it in any number of apparently screwy situations with government edicts and actions and policies,things that don't make any sense at all on the surface, but make perfect sense if you can step back and see it from the fascist controllers POV.
The real reason government entities don't want data collected is that it might be compared. Performance in answering emergency calls probably varies widely, and is probably poorly correlated to how much is spent. If cites were compared in their performance, people would demand better. Since it is difficult to falsify objective measures like location and response time, this data gets the "if everyone knew how long it takes to get an ambulance, the terrorists win" treatment.
I wrote parts of this stuff
This is a genuine question, and I haven't been able to figure out a logical answer.
Why is it "important" or "useful" or whatever, to know where the Fire trucks are responding at any one time? Maybe a weekly report or even daily, is enough for people to see the big picture, but real time?
This is really a case of "because we can, we should" even if the outcome is useless.
Anyone care to enlighten me?
...Please look up RCW 42.56.030 and read it. You can look it up at http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/
Its been Washington State law since 1977.
There was little reason for them to discontune the service. Turningo wIncidents.htm Live feed that is now in JPEG form back into text is easy.
http://www2.cityofseattle.net/fire/realTime911/sh
It's on a minor inconvience from having to parse relivant text from the HTML, now they need some OCR.
The font's are clean and sould be very easy to set up some automated OCR.
seattle911.com is just making too big of a deal out of in, instead of following the hackers way to just Decode the JPEGS and just keep on going!!!!
John L. Sokol
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Why do you want to know? You're woken up at 2:00 am by multiple sirens that are obviously close to you... Looking out the window you can see their emergency lights reflecting of nearby buildings but you can't see what is happening. What to do? Jump on the web site and see what they sent. An aid car and one engine for a medical emergency? Go back to bed. On the other hand, if they send two engine companies, two aid cars, a ladder company and the Hazmat unit then Something Bad is going down and just maybe it would be prudent to go somewhere else until things blow over (or at least close the windows and keep an eye on things).
I went thru this four times in the apartment building I lived in 3 years ago... it was nice to be able to see in near real-time what SFD was responding WITH and what the basic call type was.